Child of God
by Tiny Octopus
Summary: One of Kakuzu's side jobs involves the transportation of a girl sold in the slave trade, but the entire thing gets more complicated when he makes a startling discovery about her. Not a happy fic. Heavily inspired by the doujinshi "Angel's Elegy" and contains non-graphic non-con. Also on A03.


**Just a quick note before we get started:**

**The characterization of Hidan in the doujinshi "Angel's Elegy" has always stuck with me, and that is the Hidan written here. He is childish in many ways and, despite being immortal, has not had a wide range of life experiences and has yet to fully grasp the concept of death. He is familiar with pain and fear and little else. He has the potential to care for someone he relates to in the same way one might care for a pet. It's unlikely, especially in his line of work, that he will ever have the level of social functionality that would allow him to live like an ordinary person.**

**And before we get started, another quick warning about the doujinshi for those who are not familiar with it: "Angel's Elegy" is not your average casual doujinshi and is most definitely _not _for the faint of heart. It might disgust or offend you. Please do not go looking for it without those things in mind.**

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**I**

The crowd at the shrine was one living, breathing, writhing entity, swaying in unison as they gazed upon the young woman seated at the top of the steps in ceremonial clothing. A god in mortal flesh, they said, though she shied away, eyes turned down. Kakuzu had heard that the girl had been kidnapped from her home country and was supposed to be on the slave market until something changed the kidnapper's minds and she was brought to the shrine instead. He hoped she wouldn't put up a fight.

**II**

They came under the cover of night. While Hidan took care of clearing an escape route, Kakuzu went to handle their target. Sliding the paper door to the side, he found her curled up in one of the storerooms, eyes fearful. She must heard her bodyguard's screams. "We're here to take you with us," he said, and she trembled.

"Am I going home?" There was hope beneath her fear, and Kakuzu pitied her.

"I'm afraid not."

**III**

It wasn't supposed to be a particularly long or complicated mission. They just need to transport Hinazuru-he didn't care about her name, but he'd ended up asking for it out of convenience-to the man who had bought her. It was a long journey, but the money would be worth it. Kakuzu hadn't given her many opportunities to run; he had a short temper and didn't want to complicate the job, though she'd seemingly resigned to her fate and hadn't bothered even searching for a way to escape. Evenings around a campfire became uncomfortable as Hidan, unnerved by the silence that Hinazuru brought, stalked off at night rather than started a ruckus as usual. Having a third person threw off their dynamics completely, and though he did his best to make the journey bearable for all three of them, Kakuzu was looking forward to being rid of her.

"What were you doing at that shrine in the first place?" he asked, not well-versed in the art of polite conversation. He was curious, though. It wasn't every day that black market slavers just dropped someone off in some little village in the middle of nowhere.

Hinazuru either didn't notice or wasn't bothered by the abrasive question. "They were going to sell me," she said softly, "And then they changed their minds." The unspoken question _why?_ was left hanging between them for several moments before she finally caved and muttered, "It's because I'm immortal. They thought I must not be human, and were afraid they would receive divine punishment."

It wasn't the answer that Kakuzu expected, and he almost laughed. Divine punishment? Perhaps it was simply Hidan's nature, but he'd never once feared anything of the sort in all of his time working with him. Though he was also struck by the implications; he's previously believed immortality to be unique to Hidan, but if what this girl said was true, then maybe there were others like them. He wondered what chose these people to hold immortality. It must be blind, he thought, to have chosen someone like Hidan who would only abuse it, and foolish to choose someone as meek as Hinazuru, who would only waste it by never taking any risks.

**IV**

"She's kind of like you." Kakuzu eyed his partner carefully for a reaction but he continued walking silent as he had been. Hinazuru hadn't disobeyed even one of his orders, earning time to herself in the day while they went to buy supplies. "She can't die. At least, that's what she told me."

Hidan stopped, looking at his partner expectantly, waiting for him to continue. The older man just let his words hang there, prompting an impatient "and?" from Hidan.

"That's all. I just thought you'd like to know."

Later, he would think back and wonder if he shouldn't have said anything at all.

**V**

Fundamentally, Hinazuru and Hidan were very different people. While neither could die, Hidan didn't seem to fully understand death, while she feared it and reacted violently to danger. Their behavior, too, was different, with Hinazuru the younger yet far more mature of the two of them. He started to wonder if she was lying.

"Is it true that you're immortal?"

She flinched at the word like it bit her. "Yes." And that was all the more she said.

**VI**

They were in the village when she saw a little girl who couldn't be more than four or five years old fall in front of them. She began to wail as she cradled her bruised, ruddy knee. Kakuzu stepped around the child, but when he no longer heard the other two following him, he stopped and turned around. Hinazuru had crouched down to hug the crying child, pulling her snot-covered face into her shoulder. "There, there," she said, "Did you fall? Did you hurt yourself? It'll be okay."

The strangest sight of all was Hidan, standing a few feet behind her with an expression of awe on his face. Kakuzu couldn't tell what he was thinking.

**VII**

"I'm beginning to think you aren't actually immortal."

"Why?"

"I'd thought that you and Hidan would be a lot alike. You couldn't be more different."

"It's because he's a devotee of Jashin. He likes pain because it brings him closer to his god." She winced again, like she did whenever they discussed her supposed immortality. "He chases the feeling you get when you die, when your body stops fighting and when your eyes close even when you want them to stay open."

"Do you feel that every time you die?"

"Every time," she says, and she sounds reluctant, as though someone might hear her.

**VIII**

An ambush.

The enemy waited for them to leave the city, tracking them until the time was right. Kakuzu knew, but said nothing. They caught Hinazuru first; slit her throat before Hidan could even turn around. She lay on the forest floor with a growing pool of red beneath her and Kakuzu began to think she really had lied.

But when the fight had ended, Hinazuru began gasping and coughing up blood, her neck wound closing as steam rose from the gash. Hidan always died like a phoenix, in an impressive, blazing battle, and then rose from the ashes with laughter. Hinazuru came back like she was being born for the first time; trembling, wet and crying.

**IX**

Kakuzu caught Hidan trying to convert Hinazuru one evening when he returned to the inn, hearing cult nonsense spewing from his partner's mouth. "Jashin will make you stronger," he said, "Every death will be meaningful. Every pain you feel will be a religious experience."

"It sounds very...different." Hinazuru would have been Yamato Nadeshiko if she wasn't with them-beautiful, polite and obedient, unwilling to make anyone unhappy. If it weren't a job, he might've slept with her by now.

**X**

The job was canceled when their client met a brutal and bloody end at Hidan's hands after double-crossing them. It seemed too convenient to be a coincidence, but since they found his mansion and got their pay, there were no problems.

Well, there _was_ a problem; Hinazuru was still with them. Kakuzu chalked it up to curiosity and lust, but he couldn't bring himself to part with her yet. The fact that she wanted to go home was important to him in that he absolutely, vehemently could not let her do it.

They stood in the bloodied entryway, Hinazuru keeping her eyes away from the corpse of her buyer, and she asked them, "What now?" She sounded hopeful again. This time, Kakuzu felt no pity.

"Nothing. You stay with us now."

**XI**

Hidan spent a lot of time looking at Hinazuru, more than he spent looking at anything else. When Kakuzu returned to the inn, he found his partner sitting across the bedroom watching Hinazuru's chest rise and fall. For all the tact the man didn't have, he knew better than to stare when she was awake. Kakuzu never spoke; he just watched Hidan watch.

**XII**

"I'm impressed at how public this information is," Kakuzu mused, opening the binder on the table between him and Hidan. A photo of a young Hinazuru with a dirty face and bloody hands clattered out of it and Hidan snatched it, staring down at the girl's image with the same awe on his face. "If that bastard Orochimaru really wanted immortality so bad, he could've just done some goddamn research." It had been disturbingly easy to find records of experiments on the "immortal children," a group of unrelated boys and girls who shared Hidan's unique gift. It was even easier to single out individual subjects; Hinazuru's file in particular was extensive, a collection of previously-gathered data to serve as the basis of new, inhumane experiments.

"It says her kind are sterile," he read, and the little morality he had left cringed when it remembered that these tests were, for the most part, on _children_. "Their regeneration rate is slower than yours, but effective, nonetheless." Hidan didn't seem to be listening, too focused on the glossy paper in his hands and the face that mirrored one he knew.

**XIII**

When they traveled, insects avoided them. Kakuzu watched a line of marching ants deliberately change course to avoid running into Hinazuru. Of course, when he thought about it, it was the same when he walked with Hidan. He only heard birds and saw animals when he wasn't with either of them, as if nature itself rejected them as abominations.

**XIV**

Hidan walked in on them the first time Kakuzu decided he didn't feel enough pity to not have his way with her. Hinazuru was a virgin, to his relief and disappointment, but she was Yamato Nadeshiko, so she kept her mouth shut for the most part. Even though she pretended she didn't like it, a touch here and a bite there made her melt into him.

He hadn't meant for Hidan to see it, but his partner came in at that very moment, finding Hinazuru pressed between the floor and the older man. The door slowly slid shut on its own. Kakuzu didn't stop, but Hinazuru started to fight him as though she had a chance now. He shouldn't have hit her, but he did, just a little, not too hard. She went still and Kakuzu turned her onto her stomach facing Hidan, tears welling up in her eyes as she tried to ask for help without speaking.

Hidan, to everyone's surprise, said nothing. Silently, he sunk to his knees and, keeping his distance, he watched. Kakuzu realized long ago that Hidan didn't understand pleasure in the traditional sense, so he must have found Hinazuru's face, red and tear-stained, to be something pleasant to look at.

For some reason, she tried not to cry in front of him.

**XV**

Hinazuru was like an expensive toy they'd stolen from the store who looked tempting from afar and irresistible within reach. She'd been a singular experience, but as all things do, she began to fall into disrepair. Some children kept all of their toys, and some threw them away the moment they broke. Kakuzu couldn't remember if he was the type to fix toys or break them as a child, so he hadn't decided what to do with her yet.

She started to have breakdowns, brought on by nothing in particular and lasting for several minutes of sobbing before she'd compose herself and be silent for a time. If it were anyone else-Hidan included-Kakuzu might have punched them and told them to shut up, but when Hinazuru cried, she was painful to look at.

During their latest travels, she stopped and refused to go any further at the top of a hill despite his best coaxing and threats. It was different than usual-she fell to her knees and shook, wailing like a child. Kakuzu was honestly at a loss. Hidan passed him without hesitation and took up a spot in front of her on the ground. Slowly, with practiced gentleness, he wrapped his arms around her, pressing her face into his shoulder.

"There, there." His expression was blank like he wasn't sure what kind of face he was supposed to make, but he seemed determined. "Did you fall? Does it hurt? It'll be okay." Hidan's tone was identical to the one Hinazuru had used on the crying village child, and he copied her posture exactly as well. She didn't seem to notice and held onto him tightly, hands fisted in his cloak like she feared she'd drown without him. "There, there," he said again as she grew quieter, sobs turning into hiccups as she shook in his arms.

**XVI**

"You must think immorality is a gift."

Kakuzu let out a "hm," and shrugged, pretending he wasn't interested in the conversation. Actually, he was very interested, as it was the first time she'd spoken to him in almost a month.

"It's not. I just want you to know that." Hidan didn't leave them alone together anymore. He'd never expressed that what he saw that first time angered him, but nonetheless, he was a constant presence now, always looming over her when she was weakest. "Not being able to die means that you'll suffer forever. It's not a gift."

Truthfully, he hadn't thought about it that way before. Living meant you would get hurt, but death was the end of that, wasn't it? Not everyone had that luxury, though. Kakuzu was different because he chose to keep living, but he was different from both of them, a medium between the too-sensitive Hinazuru and the maniacal Hidan.

"I suppose you have a point."

She was visibly startled that he'd spoken to her in such a soft tone, but her shock lessened and gave way to a timid gesture in which the corners of her lips twitched and almost rose. Come to think of it, he never had seen her smile before. He had to admit, it suited her.

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**I write a lot of angst, but this might be a bit more than usual.**

**Hidan and Kakuzu weren't given a lot of time to develop in the source material, but I think, considering what we do know about them, that they might have been something like this.**

**Please let me know what you think about this characterization.**


End file.
